She was as reluctant to end the night as he was, he realized. She was no more ready to say good night than he.
“Marged,” he said, “I do not doubt your courage or your commitment to the public cause or your personal grievance. I honor you for what you have done tonight.”
“But,” she said. “I hear a but in your voice. Don’t say it. Please. I have admired and respected you so much tonight. Don’t spoil it by talking about a woman’s place. A woman’s place is not always at home. Her place is where she must be. And I must be with my people during these protests, sharing the exertion and the danger—and the exhilaration with them. I must be with you. With Rebecca, that is. Don’t forbid me to go.”
Damnation! All his resolve was melting away. “And if I did?” he asked her. “Would you obey?”
She did not answer for a few moments. “No,” she said at last.
“Rebecca must demand total obedience of her children,” he said. “It is necessary for the success of our cause and for the safety of all. I suppose, then, I must not issue a command that cannot be obeyed. Doing so would merely place us both in an impossible situation, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. And then more fiercely: “Thank you. Oh, thank you. I knew you were a man I would like almost more than any other.”
His heart turned over at the compliment, though he knew that it was a compliment for Rebecca rather than for the man behind the mask.
“Come,” he said. “It is time you were safe in your bed.” He dismounted, holding her firmly in place with one hand as he did so. Then he reached up both arms and lifted her to the ground.
She stood in front of him, staring up at him. His hands were still at her waist, he realized, though he did not remove them. She looked absurd and rather endearing with her cloth cap covering all her hair and with her blackened face.
He lifted one arm and took off the cap. Any hairpins she had been wearing to hold her hair in place must have come away with it. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back in thick waves. He had not seen her with her hair down, he realized, since she was a child.
“I must look a mess,” she said.
He was touched by the vanity of the words, so rare with Marged. She did look a mess. And strangely lovely.
“It is the blackening that really does the trick,” he said.
“Oh.” She brushed the knuckles of one hand ineffectually over one cheek. “I had forgotten that. So you have seen me with part of my mask removed. Let me see you. It is dark and I would never know you to identify.”
“Marged,” he said, taking her hand in his and drawing it away from her face, “I am Rebecca. There is no one behind the mask.” He was about to carry her hand to his lips, but realized that it might be too familiar a gesture. He squeezed it instead. “Good night,” he said. “I will stand here until you are safely inside.”
“Good night,” she said, returning the pressure of his hand. “Good night, Rebecca. And thank you for riding so far out of your way.”
He released her hand, but she did not turn away from him fast enough. She paused long enough to smile at him. Too long. He set his hands at her waist again, drew her against him, and kissed her.
He could feel nothing but her lips, trembling against his own—the wool of his mask kept his face from touching hers. But it was enough. Too much. He deepened the kiss, parting his lips over hers, licking at them with his tongue. Marged! Love, he was discovering, could lie dormant for ten years but did not die. It could flower again with one kiss. Flower into a more intensely glorious bloom than before. Yes, it was like the flowers of springtime, blooming out of plants seemingly dead at the end of a long winter.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes and her voice dazed when he lifted his head. Her hands were stroking across his shoulders. “Who are you? Who are you?”
“Go in now,” he said. “Go now, Marged.”
She gazed into his eyes for a moment longer and for the first time he saw a frown between her brows and doubt in her eyes as if she were recognizing him. But she shook her head and turned away. Before he could assist her, she was through the gate and hurrying across the farmyard to the house. He could scarcely see her by the time she opened the door, but he thought she turned to wave to him. He lifted a hand in response and kept it there, motionless.
If only he had not been so foolish as a boy, he thought. If only he had not cut himself off from Tegfan so ruthlessly that even a personal letter from the woman he had loved had not made it into his hands. She could love him again. He had seen it in her face and heard it in her voice and felt it in her kiss. If only he had not done things to make her hate him, he could woo her back. But those things were irreversible. He could not bring her husband back to her. And if he could, he would lose her anyway.
He would do it gladly, he thought with a jolt of pained surprise, if only it were possible. He would bring back the husband she had admired and loved. And so cut himself off from her forever. It would be enough to know that she was happy.
And that perhaps she would remember him with some kindness.
He stood at the gate for a long time before turning back to his patient horse and swinging himself back into the saddle.
She was in chapel at the usual time on Sunday morning. She sat very erect, looking straight ahead instead of giving in to curiosity and looking about to see how many of last night’s Rebeccaites had managed to get themselves out of bed in time.
She realized that she had had no more than four hours of sleep. What surprised her was the fact that she had had that much. She had not expected to sleep after scrubbing her face and undressing and climbing into the cupboard bed, exhausted as she had been. There had been too much teeming around inside her head.
But she had found as soon as her head was on the pillow and the blankets up beneath her chin that there was only one image in her mind after all. There was Rebecca’s face covered by the pale mask, surrounded by the blond ringlets. And Rebecca’s light eyes, beautiful and compelling. Eyes that for a moment before she had come inside had had her reaching for something in the recesses of her memory that just would not come into her conscious mind.
And Rebecca’s mouth, warm and inviting and wonderful—and giving the startling lie to any lingering myth that there was no man behind the mask.
